Rational synthesis of monodispersed shape-controllable nanoparticles is the first step towards applications in bio-detection that use shape-specific properties of nanoparticles for detection. To direct the growth of nanoparticles (including inorganic nanoparticles such as gold or silver) with specific shapes, templates encoded with the designed geometry are often used. Soft templates, e.g., structures self-assembled from amphiphilic surfactant molecules, have succeeded in creating diverse shapes. However, it is generally difficult to predict the shape of the resultant structure (partially due to the flexible nature of the template), and hence it is challenging to design structures with prescribed shapes using this approach and program the growth of inorganic materials. Hard templates, such as oxides or viruses, have also been utilized to direct the growth of nanowires or nanorods, with better predictability of the resultant structures. However, these approaches may only produce a small number of shapes, which may limit the programmability of shape diversity. Improved methods and articles that could address some or all of these issues, and/or other challenges in the art, would be beneficial in a number of different fields.